Owlpen Manor

Owlpen Manor
Owlpen Manor from the south, with Court House (left) and church
General information
Architectural style	Tudor vernacular
Town or city	Owlpen
Country	England
Construction started	1450
Completed	1616
Technical details
Structural system	Cotswold stone cruck trusses stone tiled roof
Design and construction
Architect	Norman Jewson (1926 repairs)

Cotswold stone

Owlpen Manor is a Tudor Grade I listed manor house of the Mander family, situated in the village of Owlpen in the Stroud district in Gloucestershire, England. There is an associated estate set in a valley within the Cotswold Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. The manor house is about one mile east of Uley, and three miles east of Dursley.

Owlpen Manor invites superlatives: "the epitome of romance", wrote David Verey (The Buildings of England, Gloucestershire: The Cotswolds) in 1970; the poet Algernon Charles Swinburne already described it as "a paradise incomparable on earth" in a letter to William Morris in 1894. It was designated by Historic England as a grade I listed building on 23 June 1952. The manor house is of medieval origins, incorporating fabric dated by dendrochronology to c. 1270, but was largely built and rebuilt in the Tudor period by the Daunt family between 1464 and 1616. Since then it has not seen significant development, except for some improvements early in the 18th century, when the east wing of the house, together with the gardens, church and Grist Mill, were reordered by Thomas Daunt IV between 1719 and 1726.

Owlpen (pronounced locally "Ole-pen") derives its name, it is thought, from the Saxon thegn, Olla, who first set up his pen, or enclosure, by the springs that rise under the foundations of the manor, about the 9th century.